What do you say when you have nothing to say? What are you saying when you say nothing at all?

If I had nothing to say, I prolly wouldn’t say anything. At least nothing would come out of my mouth. Its just up to you to decide what it is I mean by the silence.

Having nothing to say, or just saying nothing, doesn’t mean that you have nothing to say, necessarily. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Your loud silence speaks a library full of possibilities, you just don’t get to control what it is that people are assuming you are saying through the silence. Silence can be very ‘potent’.

By saying nothing at all, you leave your audience in a most awkward quandary for each is left to divine what the heck it is you mean by your ‘stinking’ silence.

Call me crazy, but I just ain’t a good diviner sometimes.

Silence could mean pretty much anything. Here’s a few ideas. Silence could meant that..

1. I’m speechless. I’d rather stare at you because the depths of your beauty are infinite and the words that I would say wouldn’t even scratch the surface.
2. The value of that which I am about to speak is not worth the time and effort associated with speaking it.
3. I am not ready to tell you what I am actually dying to tell you.
4. You are not ready to hear what I am actually dying to tell you.
5. I’m too ignorant to explain it.
6. You’re too ignorant to understand what I’m about to say.
7. The timing isn’t right.
8. The timing is too good and I’m a chicken liver.
9. I don’t have enough time.
10. I am thinking so many things that it’s a veritable impossibility to speak them all, so in silence I remain. The classic paralysis by analysis.
11. I’m just not any good with words so I’d rather you guess what the heck I’m thinking and I’ll tell you if you’re hot or cold. (A silent invitation to play 20 questions).
12. If you’re a girl, your silence is because you assume that the dude can and has read your subtle ‘signals’. He should know what you’re thinking anyways.
13. I’m boring.
14. You’re boring.
15. I’m too tired and I don’t want to talk about it.
16. You talk too much and I need a break.
17. I’ve talked for the last hour straight. It’s your turn.
18. You have something in your teeth and I’m too embarrassed to tell you.
19. This date is over.
20. I just passed some mean gas and I don’t want anyone to think it was me so I keep my mouth shut, or plug my nose and keep my mouth open so I can breathe.

It may be better to just speak up and say it was you

The silence raises a lot of questions doesn’t it? Makes a body wonder what is meant by the silence. Even through the silence you can almost hear the neurons at work in that thought factory thinking up stuff.

By not saying anything at all, you’re saying a whole lot.

Bling.

Life is like a blender AND maybe like a box of chocolates too, but for this post, more like a blender please. Yes, I’m serious. Yes, I’m serious.

Electric blenders are mysteriously cool and supremely advantageous and somewhat necessary in order to live a convenient life full of convenience and smoothies. (My sister has one of them Vitamix deals that are just really unreal).

With a blender, almost unlike any other machine known to mankind, random unkempt stuff that seems like it shouldn’t go together, just does somehow.. in a smooth kind of way.

All you do is throw a bunch of produce, or fruit. or junk food or healthy food or gourmet food or last month’s leftovers or all of the above in to the pitcher thingy with the sharp twirly thingies attached to the bottom of it, throw the plastic/rubber lid thingy on top, and hit the GO button. Then you just let it go.. and it does its thang.

(The mildly disruptive part of smoothie making) After you hit the GO button, you just might need to hold your hands over your ears and do all you can to make it through the deafening 100db noise without pulling your hair out in convulsive spasms. You’ll be rewarded if you do. (If you have a Vitamix though, the thing just purrs even when it’s blending up blatant nastiness).

Seconds later, the good part. de-lid the thingy and pour the pure n tasty smoothie-ness into your smoothie catcher cup. The whole deal is vaguely miraculous. Imagine.. ungood food can come out good all of a sudden, as if it was always meant to be good.. even vegetables. Because let’s be honest, the foods’ true identity had just been hidden under an unblended shield ever since I was a kid. (My mom wishes she had known the secret) Bummer, now the secret’s out.

So where’s the miracle?

This is what’s miraculous: You can throw rough stuff and hard stuff and wet stuff and dry stuff in the same blend and they’ll all come out smooth (I’m assuming that you and I are both thinking about biodegradable stuff.. you know, like food, not rocks).

What does this have to do with life? Check this out. We all of a “blender of life” so to speak. Life is full of ungood stuff (and of course good stuff too, but let me prove a point). You know, the kind of stuff that just hurts the mind, body, and soul. Emotional, physical, spiritual rough stuff that just needs to be smoothie-fied or just blended somehow… if it were possible… at the “bearable” speed. Life gets hard sometimes.

Here’s the punch line: Zoom out. Luckily we have a Master Blender who has an eternal-sized magic blending machine that has the ability to make EVERYTHING smooth again, even though the “everything’s” roughness would seem overbearing or insurmountable or permanent. With the touch of the Master Blender, somehow, our life, as rough and as tough and complicated as it may seem, can all come out happily smooth again… that’s a miracle of astronomic proportions.

At times, I’ve felt like I’ve put all the wrong ingredients in my own “blender of life.” But somehow, with the touch of the Master Blender, I’ve come out with beauty abounding and smoothie-ness all around.

The inspiration for this post: After years of butchering bachelorhood… finally getting the right consistency.

Bling.

I can’t help but notice beauty. Expecially the kind of beauty that is so reaching and rarefied that mere words can do nothing but form an unabridged injustice. Sometimes, an item or moment of beauty is so singular that an attempt to encapsulate it in just one wordy definition is a veritable crime.

I believe that you cannot capture true beauty with words. For if you did, the encased would hardly fit the encasement. Moreover, silence would most assuredly serve more soundly.

The kind of beauty I’m referencing isn’t the kind you’ll see in a pageant, on MTV or E! or Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or Pimp My Ride. The kind of beauty I’m talking about flies past reason and rhyme and riches and builds it’s own beauty-filled bridge across bottomless fissures or chasms of what we can call the mundane–landing itself on the far side while leaving eyewitnesses with just a feeling of jaw-dropping and bone-chilling awe.

This is the beauty that surpasses all understanding. Such beauty can therefore only give birth to feelings, not words at all. This beauty is described by loud silence or by residue feelings of wonderment.

I saw just this kind of beauty two nights ago.